TikTok has become the most debated app inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Many are confused on why the U.S. wants to ban the app TikTok. The U.S. is not the only country that has investigated TikTok or has banned the app completely. In July of 2020, TikTok was banned in India due to border issues between China and India.
It all started around 2017 when the company Bytedance bought Musical.ly and rebranded the app now known as TikTok. TikTok started to become popular around 2019 and 2020 — when the COVID-19 pandemic started. In December of 2019, TikTok became the second most downloaded app in the world.
Around this time, in October of 2019, the U.S began investigating the app to ensure that it is safe for U.S. users because of Chinese ownership. By December of that same year, the U.S. banned TikTok from all military phones.
In the height of the pandemic, in July of 2020, President Donald Trump considered banning TikTok due to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19. Trump’s resolution to this problem was to have the original owners Bytedance sell the app to a U.S. company before he left office. This plan fell through because President Joe Biden took office and postponed the TikTok ban altogether.
After the switch in administrations, talk about a TikTok being ban stopped. TikTok later came out with a new set of guidelines to combat harmful content being posted to the app in February of 2022. Not long after, in April of 2022, TikTok became the top downloaded app in the world.
But just a few months later, in June of 2022, it was announced that the Bytedance company/employees had access to the U.S. user data through TikTok. Right after this came to light, TikTok announced that user data had been transferred to U.S.-based servers. Not much was said after the data was transferred.
Then, in March of 2024, the House of Representatives passed a bill called the TikTok Ban-Or-Sell Bill. In April of 2024, President Biden signed the bill. Not long after, Bytedance sued the U.S. Federal Government, claiming the ban on TikTok was unconstitutional.
Administrations have switched again, and on Dec. 27, 2024, Trump tried to withhold the TikTok ban until he got into office to reach “political resolution.”
The case between Bytedance and the U.S. Federal Government resulted in the ban of TikTok to go into effect on Jan. 19, 2024. The evening of Jan. 18, the app went offline in the U.S.
But only 12 hours later, on the day the ban was to go into effect, TikTok was up and running again for those who kept the app on their phones. It was then restored because President Trump granted an extension to the app. However, anyone in the U.S. who deleted the app or didn’t have it before no longer have access to it. TikTok is no longer on any app stores in the U.S. and its future is still uncertain.
